Among the many significant contributions that Russ De Valois made to vision science, few may prove to have been more influential than his demonstrations of the power of studying primate vision from the joint vantages of physiology and behavior. This talk will illustrate how pursuit of a topic that exemplifies this approach, the themes and variations of primate color vision, has contributed to our understanding of the biology of color vision, the evolution of color vision and, ultimately, the utility of color vision.